Small Business Sales Tips from my years selling to businesses.

I wanted to follow up with a few basic sales tips that have worked well for me over the years.

1. Don't talk about what you do, state the problems you solve.
Your audience doesn't really care about you. They care about how they're going to hit their targets and numbers. They want to know how they will succeed. If your solution will help them, tell them what problems you solve. People buy solutions.

2. Summarize what you do into one short line, even shorter than an elevator speech.
People may ask you what you do for a living but they don't have time for a seminar. You need to be able to summarize what you and your company do in one line. When I was a business broker I used to tell people that 'I help business owners confidentially transition to the next chapter of their life.'

3. Make sure your prospect can afford your solution.
There's nothing wrong with qualifying prospects. Your time is valuable and you don't want to waste it on people who can't afford you. Make statements along with questions such as, 'our solution generally helps companies with sales in excess of $2 million. Would you be in that category?' People will be far more likely to answer yes or no to this question than if you asked them what their annual sales figure was in the first meeting.

4. You really can't 'sell' someone in a B2B environment, you just present opportunities.
I learned long ago that individuals may make an impulsive buying decision but businesses rarely do. You can try all the sales tactics and strategies you want but when it comes to B2B sales, your job is to present opportunities to the prospect. It's their job to decide if they will participate or not.